Send "Akron " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 In the pantheon of oddball origin stories, the legend of Akron/Family's fifth LP should rank high: After a slew of ignored deadlines, a cardboard box containing "four blown out song fragments on a TDK CDR in a ziplock bag, three pictures, and a typewritten note" landed on Dead Oceans' doorstep along with a "sincere but poorly made diorama." (The note contained helpful phrases such as "Do Not Erase / I Was Ak / Flourish.Flourish.Flourish./ Fuck Shit Up."). Somehow, that crate of detritus ultimately coalesced into Akron/Family II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT, a record purportedly written in a cabin built into the side of an active volcano in Akan National Park in Hokkaido, Japan and recorded in an abandoned train station in Detroit.Whether all that's true or not, everyone appreciates a good bit of myth-making, and it's a fitting narrative for a record that plays like a sci-fi novel: Listen long enough and you'll hear volcanoes, old trains, purple lights, and Detroit summer, all tangled up with snippets of found sound and goofy lyrics about worms. There are plenty of global influences here, from Brazilian fuzz to Japanese noise, but Akron/Family's always been most interested in repurposing ancient American folk music, and they pull from Harry Smith's famed Anthology of American Folk Music as much as anything else. Like compatriots Animal Collective, MV & EE, and the No-Neck Blues Band, Akron/Family manage to make even the most familiar refrains-- like the sing-the-vowels opening of "A AAA O A WAY"-- sound deeply strange. The band, which splits time between New York City and Portland, Oregon, lost founding member Ryan Vanderhoof in 2007 (he left to enter a Buddhist Dharma center); they soldiered on as a trio. Since Vanderhoof's departure, the band's M.O. has become increasingly tricky to define (they can riff like the Kinks-- see "So It Goes", especially-- or meander like early Tower Recordings, depending on the track), but they're at their best when they're shooting for some kind of ecstatic high. The spastic, shimmering "Another Sky" is the album's glowing center; it streaks out of your speakers like an aurora borealis. "The first light of the morning echoes the song in my heart," quasi-frontman Seth Olinsky sings in his thin, easy voice (it nicely balances the roughness of his distorted guitar). Light is a reoccurring notion here, both lyrically and musically-- almost all of these songs open up like fireworks, leaving a shower of sparks....full text |
| Music is-amazing |
| Finally, after over a month of unanswered emails and text messages, blown deadlines, and pleas to finish and turn in their new album, last week, a large brown cardboard box showed up at the Dead Oceans doorstep. Upon miraculous resuscitation of the original AKAK hard drive, the album layers thousands of minute imperceptible samples of their first recordings with fuzzed-out representations of their present beings to induce pleasant emotional feeling states and many momentary transcendent inspirations. This album is titled "S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT". Artist: ...full text |
| Spinmag |
| Grateful Dead devotees really turning Japanoise Spin Rating 8 of 10 This loud and proud psych-folk trio want some old-fashioned joy on their fifth album -- and they want it now. Obviously under the sway of avant-noise pioneers like Acid Mothers Temple and Boredoms, the indie jam enthusiasts add tribal drums and walls of fuzzy guitar to their increasingly convincing hippie harmonizing. Akron's cosmic cruise extends from the honeydripping forest of "Silly Bears" to the sad street scene of "Fuji II (Single Pane)" to a birdsong-dappled paradise ("Island"), ending with a blissful shout-out to godly free-jazzer Pharaoh Sanders ("Creator")....full text |
Akron lyrics
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